Many people are aware that a second term for Donald Trump would be unspeakably bad, but if you’re looking for more specifics on exactly how bad, then today’s your lucky day. In an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday, the former president went into detail on the dystopian hell we can expect from him—which could potentially include more federal abortion restrictions as well as state laws allowing the government to track individual women’s pregnancies so that anyone who violates abortion laws can be punished.
Speaking to Time’s Eric Cortellessa about the 20 states that have enacted partial or total abortion bans, Trump said the federal government should not get involved, even if said states decide to take the Orwellian step of monitoring pregnancies in order to ensure no one runs afoul of the law and prosecute those who do. “I think they might do that,” Trump said of the Handmaid’s Tale–esque prospect. Asked if he was comfortable with states criminally charging women who obtain abortions after the law allows, he very notably did not say “no” but rather: “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” (As Time notes, President Joe Biden “has said he would fight state antiabortion measures in court and with regulation.”)
Trump has tried to cast himself as a moderate on reproductive rights by saying these matters should be left to the states to decide, though of course he is absolutely not a moderate on the issue. For one thing, he proudly brags about killing Roe v. Wade any chance he gets. For another, he refused during his interview with Cortellessa to commit to vetoing further federal abortion restrictions that could cross his desk in a second term.
And, considering the conservative push to further restrict abortion at the national level, that’s a very worrisome thing. Per Time:
Obviously, that is a shameless cop-out on the former guy’s part, and a deeply unsettling answer for anyone who believes pregnant people should get to decide what to do with their bodies.
In disturbingly related news, on Wednesday, Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect, prohibiting the procedure at a time when many people do not even know they are pregnant.
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